


The Lost Hero

by witchelmm



Series: oneshots [2]
Category: RIORDAN Rick - Works, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Other, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 04:05:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14393916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchelmm/pseuds/witchelmm
Summary: just the first chapter of tlh but piper is percy and also they curse-Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a boy. Apparently he's his boyfriend Percy, his best friend is a kid named Leo, and they’re all students in a school for delinquents. What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.Percy has a secret. His father has been missing for three days, and his vivid nightmares reveal that he’s in terrible danger. Now his boyfriend doesn’t recognize him, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, he, Jason, and Leo are taken to someplace called Camp Half-Blood.Leo has a way with tools. His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place is freaking awesome. What’s troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god.





	The Lost Hero

**Author's Note:**

> i KNOW i have other things to write ok i know

**JASON**

 Jason was having a really shitty day.

 He woke up in a school bus. That was already _terrible_. He knew it was terrible, although he couldn’t remember having been on a school bus before. Actually, he couldn’t remember much of _anything_. So, that was freaky.

 There was a boy asleep with his head on Jason’s shoulder. That was… not necessarily the shitty part. Jason didn’t really want to wake the kid up, but he imagined how weird it would be to explain why he didn’t later on when the bus inevitably stopped.

 He tried to shake him awake with his hand before realizing: he couldn’t _move_ his hand because they were _holding_ hands. His throat restricted, feeling warm and scratchy, like he had strep or something.

 It was worse (better?) than he thought.

 He couldn’t remember this guy’s _name_.

 Kids, twenty-five or so, sprawled on the seats in front of him, asleep like the boy leaning against him, or talking in the quiet way you sound after a while into a bus ride, or playing on tech that looked like it was from two thousand six.

 Speaking of which, what year was it?

 And if he didn’t know the year, how could he know how old he was?

 Thirteen? Was he thirteen? That was the last birthday cake he could sort of remember. But that felt so long ago. And all the people around him looked fifteen, sixteen, even a little older. Some of the guys had full-on facial hair.

 As the bus rolled perpetually along, Jason tried not to panic. He went over everything he _could_ remember, thinking it would make it better.

  _My name is Jason._

  _I am BLANK years old._

 Oh, Jesus.

 _I live in BLANK_.

  _The boy beside me’s name is BLANK._

_BLANK._

_BLANK._

_BLANK._

_BLANK_.

 He felt his heart speed up. He could almost hear his own breathing, the borderline-asthmatic sound he got when he started freaking out. He looked outside the window, trying to find the horizon line. That helped, right?

 All he saw was an endless desert and a Crayola-blue sky. He didn’t recognize that. He didn’t recognize any of it. He couldn’t stop shaking.

 “Jason, you okay?”

 The boy had squeezed his hand. He was awake now, barely, and looked groggy, but concerned. Messy dark hair was skewed around his ear. He had the greenest eyes Jason had ever seen; he could feel the sweat slide between their palms.

 “Uh,” Jason said. “Yeah.” Very clearly bullshit.

 The boy cocked his head. “Yeah, _no_. What’s up?”

 Jason pulled his hand back. “I don’t–”

 –He was cut off by a shout from the front of the bus. The boy rolled his eyes, but Jason didn’t think it was at him.

 The voice of a coach (obviously the voice of a coach: the fragile ego and sound of alcohol abuse was evident) sounded from the front of the bus, but Jason didn’t really listen. He studied the boy beside him, who actually was watching but not anywhere close to intently.

 He was cute. Really cute. Jason didn’t understand any of this. He wondered when he was going to wake up.

 The boy muttered, not even looking at Jason out of his peripherals, “Stop staring at me.”

 “I’m not–I wasn’t–”

 “–Relax, Jase. Joke. And Hedge’s gonna be on your ass if you don’t at least _look_ at him.”

 Jason finally looked up at the coach. He was short, like, five zero, and about as wide as he was tall, like a bowling ball of curly gray beard, white nylon, and an angry pink complexion.

 As soon as Jason looked at the coach, the coach looked back. He met Jason’s eyes in a way that was extremely particular, like he _knew_ Jason. More than that–like he knew Jason wasn’t supposed to be there.

 God, if he called Jason out… he’d have nothing to say. He’d get kicked out of this bus into the middle of the desert, and he’d die. He’d _die_.

 “I’m gonna die,” he said, slightly louder than he meant to.

 The boy looked over at him again. “Are you actually sure you’re okay?”

 “Yeah, I… I don’t know. I can’t remember–”

 “–I _swear_ , back row, if you don’t shut up I will personally send you back to campus the hard way.” The coach groped for something in the seat beside him, his hand coming back gripping a baseball bat. He gave a little homerun hit motion.

 The boy said, almost inaudibly, “I’d give anything to be back on campus right now.” He made sly eye contact with Jason, like he was insinuating something, but Jason didn’t understand what it was. He just stared blankly.

 “Anyway,” the coach said, “we’ll be there in five minutes. Take your worksheet, and a pencil, and stay with your partner. No screaming, no running, no jumping, no pushing people off the edge–not looking for the paperwork this weekend. Got it, cupcakes? Remember the damn bat.”

 Jason said, quiet and out of the corner of his mouth, “Can he talk to us like that?”

 The boy shrugged. “Always does. This is the Wilderness School. You know”–he took on an affected, joking sort of tone, like he was referencing something Jason should understand–“ ‘where kids are the animals’.”

 “This is… this is all some kind of mistake.”

 The boy half-smirked. “You’re telling me.”

 “No, like, I shouldn’t _be_ here.”

 “Yeah,” the boy said, “we’ve all been framed, y’know? You were never an addict, and Leo _totally_ didn’t run away six times.”

 A boy popped up from the seat in front of them; he looked like some sort of Latino elf with his pointy ears. He propped his chin on his hands, elbows on the top of the seat. “Okay, asshole,” he said. “Way to leave out the ten thousand dollars of stolen merch and the fucking _car_.”

 Jason asked, “What is he talking about?”

 “You know I don’t like to talk about it.”

 Elf boy said, kind of sing-songy, “It _happened_ , Percy.”

 “Shut up,” the boy–Percy–said. “I’m serious, okay? Anything but the car.”

 Jason repeated, “What is he _talking_ about?”

 “Fuck off, Jason. Just… _God_.” Percy shifted away from Jason and directed his attention out the window.

 “Who pissed in your pancakes?” said Elf boy.

 Percy sighed. “Leo–”

 “–Back row!”

 That was the coach. Leo ignored him. “So, what’s up with you guys? He”–Leo motioned to Jason–“couldn’t get it up last night or something?”

 Percy said nothing.

 Jason said to Leo, after a long moment, “I don’t know you.”

 “Ha, sure. I’m not your best friend. I’m his evil clone.”

 “Leo Valdez!” the coach yelled from the front. “Problem back there?”

 Leo winked at Jason and a still unamused-looking Percy. “Watch this.” He turned toward the front of the bus. “Sorry, Coach! Couldn’t hear. Could you use your megaphone, please?”

 The coach grunted like he was pleased to have an excuse. He unclipped his megaphone, cleared his throat, and said something, but it was impossible to tell what he said, because all that came out was, “ _We’ll build a wall. And we’ll make Leo Valdez pay for it._ ” The coach turned from pink to red and slammed down his megaphone as the bus erupted in laughter. “Valdez!”

 Percy smiled a little, like he would be laughing if he wasn’t pissed for whatever reason, and said, “How’d you do that?”

 Leo grinned. “I’m special.”

 Percy was about to say something back, but Jason had finally gotten up his courage to speak–this was getting too weird. “Guys, seriously,” he said, “What am I doing here? Where are we going?”

 Percy finally looked at him again. “Jase, you joking?”

 “No. I have _no idea_ –”

 “–Aw, yeah, he’s joking,” Leo interrupted. “He’s trying to get back at me for the shaving cream on the Jello thing, right?”

 Jason didn’t have to try at all to make his face look completely blank.

 Percy tried to reach for his hand again, but Jason pulled it back. That seemed to make Percy decide: “No, I think he’s serious.”

 Jason said, “I just don’t–”

 “–The back row has just volunteered to clean up after lunch!” the coach shouted. “Give it up for these model students, everyone!”

 The same kids who had just laughed at Leo humiliating the coach now laughed at the coach humiliating Leo. Leo said, “Shocker.”

 Percy didn’t seem to care about that. Evidently, it happened to him pretty often. Instead, he focused on Jason. “Are you actually serious? Did you hit your head? You really don’t know who we are?”

 “It’s worse, I think.” Jason shrugged. “I don’t know who _I_ am.”

-

 The bus dropped them off at a giant, red stucco building just sitting in the middle of the desert. Absolutely nowhere. Maybe that’s exactly what it was: the National Museum of Nowhere. Empty glass cases filled with sand, and blank plaques explaining them.

 The hours ahead of him looked confusing and boring. And it was cold.

 “So, crash course for the amnesiac,” Leo said as the bus stopped screeching to a halt. Kids lazily started pulling sweatshirts back on and digging around for worksheets. In the front, the coach ate a cheese stick, then the wrapper. Jason tried not to stare.

 Leo continued: “We go to the Wilderness School, because we’re awful children. Somebody decided you’d be better off _here_ than _prison_ –same as our lovely Percy; I would just like to clarify that unlike the two of you I am _not a criminal_ –so you came to Asscrack, Nevada, where you learn valuable skills like running through cacti for three miles everyday and having sex in the storage closet! It’s fun here. Trust me. All coming back to you?”

 “No?” Jason looked around at all the other kids. Sure, none of them looked like completely upstanding citizens, but none of them looked like criminals, either. He wondered what they’d all done to be sent here.

 And he wondered what he did.

 Percy had called him an addict.

 Leo rolled his eyes. “Okay, whatever. So, the three of us started off here this semester, and we’re totally tight. You _always_ do my English homework and you _never_ hang out with Percy without me.”

 Percy said, “Leo.”

 “That was a little BS–but we _are_ friends. Well, Percy’s a little more than your friend. I mean, the last few weeks–”

 “–Shut up.” The look on Percy’s face was deadly.

 Even so, Jason said, “You were holding my hand.”

 Leo looked like he’d struck gold. “You were _holding_ his _hand_?”

 “Jesus. I can’t deal with either of you today.” Percy studied Jason for a bit. Jason tried to study Percy back. He thought he’d remember if he’d had a boyfriend like Percy.

 Percy said, “He’s got amnesia or something.”

 Jason asked, “Should we tell the coach?”

 Percy snorted. “God, no. Coach Hedge would try to fix you by whacking you upside the head. We just have to wait until we get back to the school so we can talk to the nurse or–”

 “–Hey, Jackson.” A guy who was so attractive he stopped being attractive had  walked back to their seat. He completely ignored Jason and Leo. “We’re headed inside. Partners?”

 “Did I ever express even a remote desire to partner with you on this, Dylan?” Percy demanded.

 Dylan’s perfect smirk faltered. He said, “Come on.”

 He reached for Percy’s arm and pulled him toward the front of the bus. Percy looked back and mimed shooting himself in the head.

 Jason said, “Who the Hell was that?”

 He had Leo got up to start walking out the bus as well. Leo said, “Dylan. He’s obsessed with Percy ’cause he’s kinda the only gay guy at our school and Dylan has some sort of self-repression thing going on, but he’s a real dick about it.”

 “Oh.”

 “On the _bright side_ ,” Leo said, although Jason wasn’t sure there was any sort of bright side to that, “now you can’t ditch me for Percy.”

-

 Jason was too distracted to pay much attention to the exhibits, which were about the Grand Canyon. He was more occupied by his ever-growing anxiety and the group making racist digs to Percy.

 “So, how’d you get the permission slip, Jackson? Financial aid, or do you get in free with a rain dance? Or did we _all_ get in free ’cause your family runs this place?”

 For a while, Percy didn’t say anything. Finally, though, he turned away from Dylan, who was stifling laughs of his own and said, “I’m Cheyenne, Kayla, not Hualapai. This is _Nevada_ , not Montana, if you weren’t able to figure it out yourself.”

 Of course, that just made Kayla and her friends laugh. “Okay, Squanto, chill.”

 If Jason were Percy, though, he wouldn’t be able to chill. The girls didn’t talk to Percy anymore, but they did talk annoyingly loudly _about_ him.

 “What is _up_ with them?” Jason hissed to Leo. “I thought straight girls loved gay guys.”

 “Yeah,” Leo said, “they used to. But Dylan’s Kayla’s boyfriend.”

 “Yikes.”

 “Yeah.”

 “You know,” Kayla said, “it makes sense, the whole fag-klepto thing. Daddy issues, you know? Dad’s too drunk to work, so he steals shit. Dad fucks him to sleep, so now he likes cock. It works.”

 Dylan outright laughed.

 “You know fucking what?” Percy said, and it was hard to tell if he was talking to Dylan or Kayla. “Don’t get too close to the edge of the skywalk.”

 “Was that a threat?”

 “Do you feel _threatened_?”

 The exchange continued, seeming to not escalate. Leo said to Jason, “It’s funny, because if they knew who Percy’s dad really was, they wouldn’t be making shitty jokes about him. They’d all be, like, bowing down saying, _‘we’re not worthy’_!”

 “What? Who’s his dad?”

 “Are you serious? You don’t remember that your _boyfriend’s_ dad–”

 “–Look, I wish I did, but I don’t remember _him_ , much less his dad.”

 Leo whistled. “Yeesh. We have to talk when we get back to the dorm. Oh, by the way, we’re roommates.”

-

 When they first stepped onto the skywalk over the Grand Canyon, Leo said, “Man, that’s pretty wicked.”

 “Agreed.” Jason looked down. The glass was completely clear–they must pay people to clean it. They were all wearing these big fabric socks over their shoes, which Jason quickly figured out were slippery, so he stepped gingerly along.

 The glass itself wasn’t that wide, maybe five or six people across. There were some students sticking to the opaque edges of the floor, but Jason had no problem with heights.

 The wind was picking up, cold and strong, and at one point it almost pushed Jason sideways. He gripped the railing, suddenly kind of afraid, and looked up at the sky. “This can’t be safe,” he said.

 “Coach said it was.”

 “No. Look up. Storm’s over us, but sky’s clear all the way around.”

 “Native curse?”

 “The site’s blessed.”

 “Vengeful gods?”

 Jason’s head started hurting so badly he had to sit down.

 It took Leo a few seconds to stop looking at the sky and look back down at Jason. “You alright?” He didn’t sound too concerned.

 “I feel… sick.”

 “You’re not gonna throw up over the side, right? Man, I wish we were allowed to bring cameras.”

 Jason instinctually reached into his pocket and brought out a thick golden coin, one side stamped with an axe, the other with some old Roman profile and the name IVLIVS; _Julius_.

 Just holding the coin brought him a sort of comfort, though he’d never seen it before in his life. It felt warm in his palm, like a living thing, and he pressed it to his cheek and closed his eyes. It almost burned hot against his skin when compared to the wind. He felt dizzy.

-

 They didn’t try very hard on the worksheet. For one, Jason still felt like a dead man walking. Conversely, Leo was too busy building a helicopter out of pipe cleaners to pay much attention.

 “Dude, check this out.”

 Leo tossed his tiny helicopter. Jason thought it would just fall, maybe be carried by the insane winds a bit, but the little pipe cleaner blades actually spun, and it made it about twenty yards before giving up and spiraling down.

 “That’s insane.”

 Leo shrugged. “Would’ve been cooler if I had rubber bands.”

 “Seriously. Are we friends?”

 “Last I checked.”

 Jason shook his head. “How did we meet? What’s my birthday?”

 “Dude, you can’t expect me to remember that shit. I have ADHD.”

 “But I don’t remember any of this _at all_. I mean–I guess what I mean is, what if–”

 “–What if everyone else is just making up memories of you and you’re the one who’s actually right? Sorry, but there’s, like, a point two percent chance of that being what’s happening. You can’t really think that.”

 _That’s exactly what I think_.

 Jason handed Leo the paper. “Take the worksheet. I’ll be back.”

 Leo protested, but Jason didn’t look back. He made his way around the skywalk to Coach Hedge, who was leaning on his baseball bat and glowering up at the dark clouds, like they bothered him, too.

 “Is this your fault?” The coach demanded as soon as Jason was in earshot.

 “…What?”

 Coach Hedge flicked his face up to the storm. “ _That_. What are you doing here?”

 “The–the storm?”

 “Yes, the damn _storm_ , kid. Where did you come from?”

 “You mean… you don’t… know me?”

 “Never seen you before in my life.”

 Jason felt like he was about to cry. “Oh, thank God. Because I have no idea what’s happening right now. I just woke up on that bus, and apparently I have a cute boyfriend, and I just–all I know is I’m not supposed to be here.”

 “Got that right. Look, kid–you’ve got a powerful way with the Mist if you can make all these people believe they know you, but you ain’t fooling me. I’ve known we’ve had an infiltrator for days now, a monster, but you’re a half-blood. So: who are you, and where’d you come from?”

 Jason didn’t understand any of that, but it didn’t matter. “I _don’t know_. I don’t know anything; I don’t have any memories. Please. You’ve got to help me.”

 Coach Hedge stared at him for some seconds. “Great. You’re not lying.”

 “Of course I’m not. Do you know anything?”

 The coach sighed. “I don’t know who you are, kid. All I know is _what_ you are. And that I’ve got to protect you. Which is going to be way harder than I thought. Are you the special package? Is that it?”

 “What are you talking about?”

 The coach sucked his teeth. “I got a message this morning from camp”–it felt like someone was stabbing Jason in the forehead with a pencil–“about some special package, and they’re coming to get them today. I think to myself, _fine_. The two I’m watching are powerful, and older than most. And we’re being stalked, maybe that’s why they want to pick them up so soon. But then _you_ show up–it doesn’t make any sense. So, are you the special package?”

 Jason didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. The coach was right about one thing, at least–none of this made any sense.

 “You say you got no memories? Fine. The camp’ll figure things out. I’ll just watch you until they get here. Hopefully nothing happens in the next hour–”

 –Thunder backhanded the sky, so loud Jason lost his hearing for a second afterward. The hair on his arms stood up as lighting shot down, bigger and brighter than he’d ever seen, like it was cracking open the sky. It started raining so hard the drops hurt against his skin, and the winds picked up so he could barely walk. Thunder clapped again, and the skywalk shuddered.

 “I had to say something, didn’t I?” The coach grumbled. He unclipped his microphone. Donald Trump’s voice rang out of it: “ _It’ll be huge!_ Come on, cupcakes! Off the skywalk!”

 Jason grabbed the railing. His hand slipped off twice, the thing was already so cold and wet. “I thought you said this was stable!”

 “Under normal circumstances,” the coach agreed. “Which these aren’t. Come on!”


End file.
